How to reflect, grieve, and celebrate the year in your community

Prompts for your community, and you, as you pause for the holidays and the coming of the new year.

At the end of the year, most cultures will be finding ways to gather and mark the passing of time. If your community has an end-of-year gathering planned, in addition to fun and silliness, the ritual is also a great opportunity to increase connection between members via collective reflection, grief and celebration rituals.

Below are prompts you can share with your members in live events or asynchronously as an opportunity for them to pause and share end-of-year reflections with each other.

These questions are probably an invitation for your members get a little more vulnerable than you usually do within your community. Feel free to customize for your people, your values, and your intentions for next year.

Reflection

If you gather people, one of the kindest things you can do is to invite them to make time for reflection. Here are some prompt ideas to help your members reflect:

• Name the significant events and experiences from the past year.

• How have you grown? How are you different today from this time last year?

• What was your favorite moment of the year?

• What was the most challenging period of the year for you?

• At what moments did you most feel like you belonged? When did you feel lonely and disconnected?

Grief

The feeling of grief is often marked by loneliness. Making room for grief in community, helps to normalize the human experience of loss, regardless of the type of loss that occurred. Here are some prompts to consider posing:

• What are the things that didn’t go as planned this year in your work, in your life, and in the world?

• What parts of yourself and your life have ended this year? (question inspired by Reboot)

• If you could forgive yourself for something from this year, what would it be?

• What are the hard questions this year brought up that you’re still wrestling with?

• What will you miss about this year?

Celebration

The end of the year is often marked by celebrations, and even still, we often don’t take enough time for sitting with the feeling of celebration. Doing it collectively is a great opportunity to encourage your members to be there for each other. Here are some celebratory prompts to pose:

• Look back on your calendar, what are the events, milestones, people and happenings that you should celebrate?

• What are all the things you’re grateful for from this year?

• Who are the people in your life that you’re most grateful for? What relationships have you deepened and worked on this year?

• How was your ritual of celebration during this year? How can you make celebration a more regular part of your life?

We hope these reflections are helpful for your members and for you as you reflect, grieve and celebrate the holidays and the coming of the new year.

Every January, I host a yearly planning event for community builders. It’s an hour to spend brainstorming and planning the 5 areas of your community business in community with other community builders. It’ll be January 9th and you can register here. I hope you can make it!

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